Firefox Takes On Both Apple and Google With Yet Another Smartphone OS

We're getting the first set of stories out of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona: and the one that seems most interesting is that Firefox's attempt to launch a smartphone operating system seems to have some heavy backing. Telefonica, one of the largest airtime providers, is backing the attempt to create yet another competitor. So that's just Apple, Google, Microsoft and BlackBerry that they're fighting against then:

Telefonica, the telecoms giant which owns O2, is looking to take on Google's and Apple's domination of mobile operating systems by joining up with the Mozilla technology business.

In slightly more detail:

The company is working with the not-for-profit organisation to launch a new operating system based on the Firefox internet browser that Mozilla owns. The system will allow developers to produce apps based on HTML5 – the main computer language used for the internet – which it says will require considerably less effort and investment than producing apps for the Apple and Google-owned systems.

There are indeed advantages there: the use of HTML 5 might well make the writing of apps much easier. And having a large apps ecosystem is regarded as one of the necessary declarations of being a real player in the OS marketplace.

Further, there's a large reservoir of goodwill among the tech community for anything Mozilla or Firefox related. The new phones would certainly get noticed and tried: which is of coursethe first hurdle any new entrant will have to jump in order to gain wider market access.

However, I have to admit that I'm not entirely sure about this. A great OS would indeed have at least a fighting chance. But I'm really rather unconvinced that ubiquity in another, even if related, market can be used to leverage into that smartphone market. After all, Windows still runs on the vast majority of the world's desktops but they've not been able, so far at least, to leverage that into anything very much in smartphones.